> Diminishing the project to something that Scott would like to result in (a > project that only works on - in a debatable order of importance - frame > work elements, base registers as party, order and product, and e-commerce) > is, in my opinion, a path to the ASF attic.
I completely disagree with that opinion and since so much of what you wrote is based on that premise, I won't bother replying to the rest. I can only speak to what I've experienced and what I've seen but in general: - The core components that live under framework and applications (which certainly are not best described as "base registers") are the most useful set of components to implement anything a business might need. I've worked for many different clients and many different projects over the last 7 years and aside from ecommerce I have never had a set of requirements brought to me that fit well with any of the special purpose components. - Contributions to the applications/framework components outweigh those received by the special purpose components by a massive scale (no I don't have numbers, I just have that impression from reading almost every user/dev email for the last 9 years) Given that OFBiz exists today in large part because of the very adaptable "core" components, the premise that focusing only on those is a path to the ASF attic is quite false. What the OFBiz project needs to be aiming for (IMHO) is to be a lean code base that is capable of meeting the core needs of the largest possible number of businesses. Virtually all large applications (open source or otherwise) gain a large portion of their strength by having a healthy and diverse external ecosystem. Look at Eclipse, Magento and Xero to name a few. Attempting to keep everything in-house within the TLP is the equivalent of Apple trying to build every application an iDevice might need instead of opening the AppStore. They would've ended up with a large number of sub-par applications but instead they focused on a few core apps that almost everyone would use. Phone OS's are actually a really good example of how important it is for a platform to have a healthy eco-system. I think that the special purpose components are a good way to bootstrap an external eco-system that would help diversify OFBiz as a platform. Attempting to make OFBiz even more monolithic is the wrong course. Regards Scott On 10/11/2014, at 11:59 pm, Pierre Smits <pierre.sm...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi All, > > In the thread suggestion have been made to move applications (as a > fork/split off) away from the Apache OFBiz project to be maintained by > other people. This is part of an ongoing discussion that started back in > 2012 (if I recall correctly). Back then this didn't lead to consensus. Now > it also seems that this is a subject that community members aren't willing > to consent to. > > Diminishing the project to something that Scott would like to result in (a > project that only works on - in a debatable order of importance - frame > work elements, base registers as party, order and product, and e-commerce) > is, in my opinion, a path to the ASF attic. > Yes, it means that the current group of committers and PMC members can > reduce their workload by focussing on the issues they care about (which > they already do - nothing changes in that aspect). > But the additional benefit for them (and negative impact on you as user and > contributor to parts that aren't in their sphere of interest) is that they > don't have to consider the issues you raise and you as a (potential) > committer. > > Like I said it is a path to the attic. And let me explain why. Contraction > to the favourites applications of the few leads to less. Less adoption of > OFBiz as a suite of business solutions. Leading to less contributors, > leading to less committers, leading to less issues reported, leading to > less issues resolved. And this leads to even more contraction. It is a > vicious circle. Because sooner or later people move on. > > And the above is what this project doesn't need. What you shouldn't go for. > An Apache project is nothing more and nothing less than a group of people > willing to contribute and collaborate. And the result of that contribution > and that collaboration is something that the (majority of the) users - also > you - need and/or want. But it all starts with that willingness. > > When you look through our OFBiz JIRA and the mailing lists you'll find that > there have been and are plenty of people - again also you - contributing to > all kinds of aspects of the project. It doesn't (and shouldn't) matter > whether that contribution is improvements (bugs and otherwise) to the > feature set of the software, in the area of documentation, or even > regarding process and policy improvements. You are, with your contributions > of any kind, contributing to the health and future of the project. And > never forget: your contributions matter, even if some regards them as minor > or mediocre. > So the first part of participating in this project is covered and secured. > Lots of people willing to contribute! > > As for the second part, the willingness to collaborate, it cannot be denied > that people have favourites. Some prefer to work on issues related to > framework, some prefer to commit patches of issues from people they like > collaborating with. This is also thru for this project. And though it > leaves some areas of the project (temporarily) under addressed it can be > easily remediated. By inviting more contributors to be a committer. That > will lead to more issues resolved, more people working with others, a > project where losing a PMC member or a contributor is covered with > replacement, an increase in adoption. And this is a virtuous circle. This > is the circle we should go for. > > Now, we don't have to discuss setting up additional technical > infrastructures as svn sub-projects with associated JIRA constructs and > mailing lists when we don't want to embark on that journey of attracting > and getting more. Without more people willing to collaborate it is a moot > point. > > As I said earlier in this posting we have (and had) a lot of people > contributing to all of the aspects of the project. All of these are > potential committers. Yet it seems that inviting a person to be a committer > is something that may only happen when the contributions of that person are > of an exceptional benefit to the project, when contributor has super human > characteristics, or when the contributor works in the areas that are > favoured by the deciders of this project. > > We need to address that mindset within our community first. Before we > discuss setting up additional lower, technical infrastructures to ensure > that the other (good) applications get into releases. In fact, we wouldn't > be having this discussion about workload and such with more people on board. > > So far we have read the viewpoints of Jacopo, Jacques and Scott (as PMC > Members). I invite others to share their viewpoints as well. The future of > OFBiz (and your role and contributions) is important enough to express your > viewpoint. > > Regards, > > Pierre Smits > > *ORRTIZ.COM <http://www.orrtiz.com>* > Services & Solutions for Cloud- > Based Manufacturing, Professional > Services and Retail & Trade > http://www.orrtiz.com
